Sunday, July 19, 2009

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Sunday, July 5, 2009

The Lights Are Flickring

We have made leaps in the numerous new online tools such as blogs, and wikis that have enabled us to connect with our students. Among these new tools are photo-sharing sites such as flickr that has remarkable potential for learning.

An obvious feature of Flickr is its imagery; it can be used to design lessons that support visual learning. Educators could use photographs to prompt creative or interpretive writing; this would be an amazing tool in art history. I was amazed to find that Flickr allows photos to be geotagged; you can actually take a photo of a historical site and place it on a world map. This would allow a class to take a virtual fieldtrip and become familiar with its geographical location. WOW!

The use of flickr and others like it can be advantageous in the classroom, creativity has no limits.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Finding Your Niche

I found it comforting to learn that Steve Hargadon wasn’t a success in his first try, “if you jump in front of what you think is a parade and it turns out not to be have been, you have to be willing to move on or morph”, this concept can really be applied to anything. I really pride myself of my cuisine tenant; I owned a restaurant and catered weddings for many years. But, when I was young my mother did all of the cooking, so I had no common sense when it came to the kitchen. And in my first year at Flagstaff Junior High School, I became the first person to start a fire in the home economics room. No, this was not my last failure, but from each of them I learned a lesson. So, learning how to be a success by learning from your mistakes, and finding your niche will make your 2.0 classroom a success.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Yoursphere.com launched in the United States in September 9, 2008, targeting parents for their teens and kids. It was popular, because it offered minor safety features that other sites did not.

Yoursphere.com is a safe social networking site for kids only. Most social networking sites (SNS) are designed for adults, lacking the necessary safeguards for minors. Social Networking Sites such as facebook or myspace do not prevent predators from contacting your children. This site also offers positive features such as creative writing contest and other positive activities.

This website confirms the social security to information that is entered; they further search the name against a sex offender database. Parents who are giving the minor permission are included in this verification process. These safety features include monitoring cyber bulling. To pay for these safeguards, parents pay an annual fee.

Although, there are other social networking sites for minors that offer some safety features, Yoursphere.com seem to offer the safest. Yoursphere.com would be an account that I would encourage my own child to use, solely for the safety features that it offers. They use technology to oversee discussions to ensure that, they are not only appropriate but safe.